Taylor Swift has always been at her best when writing about her. But she also thrives when she writes about “Taylor Swift,” ideas, metanarratives, and characters. Swift sees the world look at her and instead of shutting it out, she absorbs it and makes those perspectives her own too.
What stands out on “Midnights” is her overly familiar sound and spotty tenth studio album, “Midnights,” a song that stands out, a careful reading of raw love. Some places are flashbacks to romantic insults from the past, but perhaps most sharply and effectively comment on what it is like to live as a deeply observed person, always by others. be told.
“Have you heard my secret narcissism disguised as altruism, like some Congressman?” My thoughts go to the Bush-esque number “Anti-Hero.” In the “Old Tales.” hook, she returns to her wide-eyed self-own again and again. “I’m the problem. It’s me.” I’m slightly depressed.
On the album’s glittering closing, “Mastermind,” she charts the origin story of her villain. Ever since then I’ve been a criminal/to make them love me and make it look like I’m taking it easy. ”
Each pop star’s life needs some outside perspective, and Swift has long spun gold from that raw material. But there are limits to this approach, and Swift hits the tipping point that all superstars ultimately reach — either keep thinking about the past or boldly move forward into the future.
In this regard, Swift largely reflects on “Midnights.” The album often played like an extension of his 2019 LP, Lover, and was equally inconsistent, albeit with a fuller sound. The songs here are chock-full of syrupy synths, giving the album an astral slow-motion effect, as if Swift were trapped in a reverb chamber.
The Cultural Impact of Taylor Swift’s Music
After a few albums that felt like pivots from soft to hard, Bonker pops on “1989.” A (relatively) edgy experiment with “reputation”. A naive, pandemic-insulated character study in “Folklore” and “Evermore” — “Midnights” feels like a concession to Swift’s old, safe ideas.
Sometimes those old fashions serve her well. “Karma” is a sombre song overall, with an aggressive plastic her sound, her voice shimmering towards the end as she exhales. A faint “question…?” I am convinced of
But some of the lyrics can be lackluster, lackluster, and frankly imaginative with little detail that made Swift one of the leading pop songwriters of the 21st century. ’” She sings on the metallic, taut “Bejeweled.”
“Snow on the Beach,” a collaboration with great American songwriter Lana Del Rey, begins with a light Christmas musical energy that never really rises. Del Rey excels at a kind of rumbling, sticky stagnation — it’s like ecstasy getting caught in a spider’s web — but Swift’s vocals are too cheery for the same effect.
Conversely, however, much of the rest of “Midnights,” which Swift produced with regular collaborator Jack Antonoff, limits her voice. On songs like “You’re On Your Own, Kid” and “Maroon,” Swift’s vocals are chokingly stacked. Only in “Sweet Nothing,” the romantic playground lullaby Swift wrote with her longtime romantic partner Joe Alwyn (an actor who uses the pseudonym William Bowery), does she characterize her. Approaching her wide-eyed vulnerability.
Some songs show how to get out of the fog. Light, breezy, lightly damp, “Lavender Haze” contains sweet vocals, but is overly reminiscent of Maggie Rogers’ hard-hitting digital fork. “Alaska”
And the album’s highlight is “Vigilante ____,” a sexy, moody electro-cabaret that spits about the story’s momentum-filled antagonist. the worst of them. Here, Swift leans into a character version of herself, swiftly to the pinnacle of her self-referencing.
Aside from the idyllic turn due to the pandemic, Swift has been spending time re-recording old albums. This is an offshoot of the ownership disputes spurred by the sale of the old masters. That kind of energy can be good for business, but bad for art. (At 3 a.m. Friday, Swift released seven bonus her tracks in relative chaos. Of the new songs, only “Glitch” and “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” not subtracted.)
Perhaps “Midnights”‘s sound choices have a slightly more cynical reading. Swift hasn’t toured since 2018 after “Reputation.” The song “Lover” has never seen the big stage (and the songs “Folklore” and “Evermore” were largely not designed for her one stage). “Midnights” feels like a sonic placeholder with a stadium in mind.
All of this raises the question of where Swift might go as a mid-career pop star if she turns again. Dua is an emotionally icy nudist in her Lipa. Voice and cultural flexibility to collaborate freely with Latin and her K-pop stars. Her ‘Midnights’ includes songs like ‘Midnight Rain’ and ‘Lavender Haze’. These songs suggest that Drake and The Weeknd are aware of how cloudy moods they’ve developed in their songs and musical productions, but she rarely commits. (Some aren’t quite compelling pitch-shifted vocals.) And she’s resisted a return to country, pop-country, or country-pop pretty adamantly.
But the template for such a point-of-view twisted album already exists: it’s called “Reputation,” and Swift released it in 2017. Rarely has Swift been so amused, anguished, and willing to consider the chasm between her self-perception and that of everyone else. It was a rowdy, tenacious, relentlessly clever album in which Swift took on herself and her world. “Taylor Swift” — bring her back.
Taylor Swift
“midnight”
(Republic)